Pavel Pantelimonovich Luk’ianenko. He repeatedly endured famine and deprivation during his early life in Tsarist Russia. His own and his family’s experiences led him to side with the Bolsheviks. Soon he became a plant breeder based on certain experiences, such as witnessing an infestation damage a crop. Soon enough he was familiarised with Kuban farming’s chronic problems: plant diseases, lodging, drought, even uncooperative misbehavior from local peasants, but the prospect of creating crop varieties to overcome these worries persuaded him to commit his life to this career in the 1920s. He bred 49 different crops, most of which were too feeble, but he didn’t give up. Fascists invaded the region in which he was working, but he didn’t give up; he and his wife packed up their goods, including lots of grain, and fled elsewhere. He had to work in spite of a charlatan trying to monopolize a scientific field, but he didn’t give up. And his magnum opus, Bezostaia-1, was one the best, strongest crops in the world and was planted in dozens of millions of hectares.
"Bezostaia-1 was planted on large areas: at least 13 million hectares (32 million acres) by the late 1960s in the USSR and Eastern Europe, as well as in Iran, Turkey, and in other arid regions. By 1972, it was reportedly planted on 18 million hectares (45 million acres). Western scientists consistently noted its high yields and plasticity, and recognized Luk’ianenko as one of the major wheat breeders of the world. […] Luk’ianenko’s work […] produced several extremely important wheat varieties that had the same characteristics as the Green Revolution varieties that Borlaug created. Luk’ianenko’s Bezostaia-1, a semi-dwarf rust resistant HYV earned the highest praise of both European and American breeders (including Borlaug) as one of the best of the HYVs. […] The work of Luk’ianenko and his colleagues, more than simply continuing previous genetics-based work in plant breeding, achieved breakthroughs that put it at the forefront of world wheat breeding, both in their methods and their results."
He passed away, quite suitably, while travelling around Kuban fields to observe the growths of new wheat varieties.
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Pavel Pantelimonovich Luk’ianenko. He repeatedly endured famine and deprivation during his early life in Tsarist Russia. His own and his family’s experiences led him to side with the Bolsheviks. Soon he became a plant breeder based on certain experiences, such as witnessing an infestation damage a crop. Soon enough he was familiarised with Kuban farming’s chronic problems: plant diseases, lodging, drought, even uncooperative misbehavior from local peasants, but the prospect of creating crop varieties to overcome these worries persuaded him to commit his life to this career in the 1920s. He bred 49 different crops, most of which were too feeble, but he didn’t give up. Fascists invaded the region in which he was working, but he didn’t give up; he and his wife packed up their goods, including lots of grain, and fled elsewhere. He had to work in spite of a charlatan trying to monopolize a scientific field, but he didn’t give up. And his magnum opus, Bezostaia-1, was one the best, strongest crops in the world and was planted in dozens of millions of hectares.
"Bezostaia-1 was planted on large areas: at least 13 million hectares (32 million acres) by the late 1960s in the USSR and Eastern Europe, as well as in Iran, Turkey, and in other arid regions. By 1972, it was reportedly planted on 18 million hectares (45 million acres). Western scientists consistently noted its high yields and plasticity, and recognized Luk’ianenko as one of the major wheat breeders of the world. […] Luk’ianenko’s work […] produced several extremely important wheat varieties that had the same characteristics as the Green Revolution varieties that Borlaug created. Luk’ianenko’s Bezostaia-1, a semi-dwarf rust resistant HYV earned the highest praise of both European and American breeders (including Borlaug) as one of the best of the HYVs. […] The work of Luk’ianenko and his colleagues, more than simply continuing previous genetics-based work in plant breeding, achieved breakthroughs that put it at the forefront of world wheat breeding, both in their methods and their results."
He passed away, quite suitably, while travelling around Kuban fields to observe the growths of new wheat varieties.
https://agrarianstudies.macmillan.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/papers/TaugerAgrarianStudies.pdf
https://mykor.ru/materialy-proekta-virtualnyi-korenovsk/raznoe-o-korenovske/pavel-panteleimonovich-lukjanenko-zasluz.html